The Chosen One
by CrossEyed7
Summary: While Obama fights TIEs in space, Joe Biden becomes the new Kira.
1. Chapter 1

"Right this way, sir."

"Thank you, Emil."

Emil. It had a nice ring to it. It'd been a long time since he'd heard that. Most of the other politicians who frequented this place didn't care what your name was. But this one was different. If he wasn't genuine, he was at least a hell of a lot better at feigning interest than most.

And, he noticed, he was a bit more forgiving of his little mental monologues. They weren't daydreams. There were never pictures. Besides, mental monologue was more fun to say. Alliteration for the win. Okay, that's enough, time to get over to the car. Can't keep the man waiting. After all, he's the one they call... well... The One.

Emil didn't buy into all that stuff, but maybe there was something to it. It was a bit early to be making any judgments, but there was definitely something out of the ordinary about him. He almost had an otherworldly glow about him. No, wait, that was the spaceship above the cab.

"Wait, what the hell?"

"What is it?"

"Sir, there's a spaceship flying above us!"

"I'll handle this."

With one swift motion, the svelte president-elect swung himself out the open window, landing deftly on the yellow roof.

"I have a bad feeling about this..."

The strange ship swerved around, approaching the cab head-on, lasers blasting. The president had no problem deflecting them with his bright blue pillar of light, but if the ship decided not to turn back, it would rip through that car, durable American-made piece of work though it may be, like a neutrino through plasma.

The delicious chocolate man heroically leapt, aided by the all-powerful Force, and landed akimbo on the TIE's cockpit. The door atop its roof opened with a single wave of his fingers, making for a very surprised pilot, dispatched without a hitch.

Suddenly, a crackly voice came in over the inexplicably low-quality speaker atop the futuristic dashboard.

"TK-1117, come in."

"Uh... Roger," he replied, doing a serviceable impression of the late pilot's disguised voice.

"Return to base. There've been some changes."

"Uh... yes sir."

The autopilot kicked in, sending the TIE en route to its base somewhere back in its own galaxy. He knew instinctively how to turn it off, but he couldn't. If anyone was going to change, he wasn't just going to be there, he was going to be it. As he safely buckled himself in, he thought to himself how glad he was he'd thought to activate that robot doppelganger before he left. This was going to be a long trip.

TO BE CONTINUED?!?


	2. Chapter 2

The trip took longer than he had expected. No worries, though. He'd made sure to eat a big breakfast that morning, so he wouldn't be starving for quite some time. The autopilot was definitely working. There were flashy lights and numbers and stuff. This was an older model, apparently, so the readouts were still in English, which was a language he knew quite well.

There was a spare suit in the back, and he decided he had better put it on. Persuasive wordsmithing would only get him so far in a faraway galaxy, although he did probably have the potential to be their third notable black guy if he played his cards right.

Speaking of unfortunate racial implications, he wondered how Joe was handling things back home. He had never gotten around to telling him about the robot doubles. It could mostly take care of itself, though, which was more than he could say for poor old Joe.

***

"There. Perfect! Ha ha!" Joe was no stranger to self-congratulation; somehow, getting that mullet to sit just right on his intriguingly-shaped head every morning never seemed to get old.

"What do you think, Barry? Hot, right?"

"Uh... it is nice..." muttered the bored robot, tired of being asked the same question every morning. "Uh... you know, Joe... uh... just because you're the VP doesn't... uh... doesn't mean we have to stay in the same hotel room. We've... uh... we've still got about two hundred million left over from the campaign." Robama's speech circuits were getting a little rusty, and the oil can was running low. He hoped his owner would get back soon.

"Think of the carbon footprint, Bar! The carbon!"

"Don't... uh... don't worry about it, Joe. I... uh... if the ice caps melt, I can... uh... recede the... oceans... and whatnot."

"No, I don't mind. The bed's big enough for the both of us."

"Yeah... I've, uh... I've been meaning to talk to you about that... I was kind of... uh... hoping to share the bed with... uh... with Michelle."

"Oh? A little of the ol' uh-uh, huh Bar?" Joe eagerly mimed a pair of pathetic little pelvic thrusts on the uhs.

Robama began to regret that Joe had paid all his taxes.

TO BE CONTINUED?!?


	3. A plot twist approacheth!

One week. One week was all it had taken to rise through the ranks, now about to get his fourth pair of red and blue squares on his chest. He had always been exceptionally skilled at impressing his so-called superiors.

He was starting to catch on here. The soldiers under his command only saw a series of unrelated skirmishes, probably overzealous training exercises from generals with nothing better to do, but he knew better. There was a pattern to these attacks. Factoring in the rotation of the galactic disc, the small, temporary bases they were setting up would form an enormous circle in the near future. And a project this big had to be coming straight from the emperor.

There was something somewhere within that circle that was apparently very important to the higher-ups. And maybe it was time to be a little more proactive about it... and earn some leverage.

It was time for some change.

***

Robama made a mental note to get his recitation algorithms looked at, hopefully before the next time he had to take the oath of office. The failsafe mechanism had taken far too long to kick in yesterday, and he was afraid many people were already suspecting the truth. Hopefully he had earned some points back with that great dancing he did a few hours later.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the White House, Joe was hard at work testing out the flavors of the gum stuck to the back of the presidential bookcase. It was a tough squeeze getting back there, and quite frankly, at this point he wasn't completely sure how or why he had gotten back there in the first place, but as it turned out, the former presidents and vice presidents in this room had owned some really tasty flavors of gum, so it was pretty much worth it. He would have to ask Nancy to add a few million for a presidential gum museum next time he saw her.

He was now reaching for a lump more brightly colored than any other piece he had seen before. The neon green of that gum -- probably indicating a delicious lime flavor, his second or third favorite -- was calling out to him like a horned owl calls out to PeTA. Nothing else mattered, least of all the pain in his limbs as he strained to reach it. A little farther... farther... oops.

The bookshelf came crashing down with an earsplitting thud, landing facedown on its spilled books. This was going to take a while to clean up. Startled by the noise, Hillary quickly yet deliberately stuck her head through the doorway.

"Something fall again, Joe?"

"Yeah," Joe admitted sheepishly.

Hillary sighed, trying to convey her weariness, though unable to suppress a bit of amusement and playfulness. She was on a schedule, though, so without any more delay, she quickly walked over to the fallen credenza and, with one swift motion, lifted it back up on its feet. She would have loved to stay and help Joe put the books back on it, but she didn't have the time now. Besides, he had done it so many times already that he probably didn't need much help anymore.

As Hillary slinked back out of the room, Joe's embarrassment started to sink in. How could he have been so stupid? Ever since middle school, he just turned into a complete klutz around pretty girls like her. He scolded himself -- he shouldn't be thinking thoughts like that. Both he and she were married, professional adults. They were both better than that. Even if there were a chance of a relationship, it would be wrong... or at least not a good choice politically. That worked a bit better.

But all that would soon be forgotten. Joe noticed a book that he couldn't recall seeing on this shelf before. About the size of a notebook, all black, and made out of some mysterious material he couldn't quite figure out. He flipped through it... almost totally blank, but for a dark page at the beginning with a long list of items written in rough lettering. Giving them only a cursory glance at first, they soon caught his full attention. Had it really said that? He looked again.

_The human whose name is written in this note will die._

OMG TO BE CONTINUED?!?!


	4. Chapter Shi!

After nearly two weeks of waiting (or so he estimated; such measurements had little meaning now), it was time to go. At his rank, he was allowed just enough vacation time to serve his purposes without raising any suspicion. He had been concentrating intensely on his private Force training every spare minute he had, discovering -- or was it creating -- powers never seen before.

He practiced some of the more useful ones before he left. The rough, unrefined look of the moves, with form and style totally subservient to functionality, felt more alien to him than the advanced sweat-redirecting Tarelle sei-weave body glove under his expensive cortosis armor. He was used to having much more finesse and much less substance in his dealings.

He knew he shouldn't misunderestimate this mission. There were so many undecided factors. He knew he could succeed, but he would need to stay incredibly focused. There was no time to worry about, say, whether the robot double had gotten the latest economic information packets properly installed on his own. This was so much bigger than that. He'd have to leave that one on autopilot for now. Channeling one of his more offbeat powers, he folded a pair of TIE Interceptors up, inexplicably reducing them in size and weight by factors of thousands, and placed the backup vehicles in his pockets.

***

"Thank you, Mr. Vice President. The premier will be very pleased with these developments."

"No problaaaaymo, Mr. Puppy Chow."

"My... uh... my name is Li. I thought we established that."

"Heh heh! Whatever! Listen, tell ol' Gigi I said hi, all right?"

"You mean... Mr. Jiabao?"

"Oh, you! Always a kidder, eh? Come over some time, we can get some take-out or something. And I'm sorry Barry couldn't be here today... said something about getting more oil."

"Right." The ambassador bowed, then quickly left, muttering something about how Li and Puppy Chow sound nothing alike.

Well, that meeting had ended pretty early. Finding himself with over an hour to kill, Joe started absent-mindedly playing with the drawers in the desk. And there it was again. That silly notebook he had taken from the lopsided gum-laden shelf. The one that claimed to be able to kill anyone whose name was written in it. Well, there were some rules about it, most of them involving numbers, but Joe didn't concern himself with things like that. "Number" was a three-letter word to him.

He was, however, pretty intrigued by this whole thing. What was such a thing doing in the White House? Had some very resourceful prankster put it in here, or was it another of those presidential secrets that the janitor on the second floor would eventually get around to telling him about?

This called, as so many things do, for experimentation. But he mustn't be reckless about this. There were, after all, quite a few buttons scattered throughout various rooms, apparently placed by the previous administration, ready to launch nukes at twenty major nations at any time, among other things. There was a very real chance that this was legitimate. He needed to be discreet about this.

Dammit, why hadn't he asked someone how to do that when he had a chance? He had no idea how discretion worked. Was it a type of cheese? Was it bigger than a breadbox? Was it something you wore? Hopefully that one; he was good at wearing things. But what could it be? Perhaps it was that bucket in the corner of the room. Hell, no harm in trying; he lifted the bucket up and placed it firmly on his head. There. Discreet was now his middle name. Well, actually, his middle name was Robinette, but now that he thought of it, he should probably change it to something a little sexier now that he could do that kind of thing. Not that he didn't love his Aunt Robinette, of course; just that the name wasn't very fitting of him. But man, could Aunt Robinette make a good boysenberry pie. With those long-gone days of his youth still on the tip of his mind, he absent-mindedly scribbled a note to remember to get that name changed. My Robinette... seriously, mom? Yuck. I could really go for some pie now.

Suddenly, a wonderful thought occurred to him -- he was the vice president! He could get pie whenever he wanted to! He stood up from the desk and stretched out a bit, then put on his tweed jacket and walked outside where his '55 Chevy, colored a bright beige, waited faithfully for him, just as it always had. He had seen a great pie store on his way in here.

Later, a piece of the puzzle would fall into place. His bulky Reagan-era cell phone would finally get some reception, and a call would come through from a hospital in Oregon that had been trying to reach him all day -- his Aunt Robinette had died of food poisoning, muttering something about pie and mothers as she suddenly dropped to the floor. Putting that together with that nagging suspicion that his poor handwriting made his lowercase Ys look like Rs and Ss and the memory of an announcement he had heard in the family letter a few Christmases ago that Aunt Robinette had recently married a nephew of Yahoo Serious had to mean... something.

TO BE CONTINUED?!?


	5. Chapter V

"So, only three names, and one of them an accident?"

"Two. Two of them are accidents. Apparently that restaurant was named after a person."

"So, only one person you wanted to kill? Interesting."

"Please don't push me, Shigao. I'm still not comfortable with this."

"Is it still the number thing? Because you're clearly not very good at that."

The Death God pointed a dry, bony finger at the top-left corner of Joe's sudoku puzzle, which had been filled entirely with pictures of cats and the letter N over breakfast.

"Don't be silly, Shiggy. I know how long forty seconds is. I just hum the Jeopardy theme!"

To demonstrate, Joe began to whistle the Plinko theme from Price is Right.

"Well, you get the idea."

"Indeed I do."

A light tap on the door.

"Joe? Are you talking to yourself again?"

"Oh! Come on in, Hill-- I mean... Secretary Clinton," squeaked Joe, shooing Shigao away at the last second, as the Secretary of State, beautiful beyond her years, walked in, her hands clasped together behind her back.

"It's all right, Joe," she giggled flirtishly, "You can call me Hillary. You can call me whatever you want. Or... whenever you want."

"Even at 3 AM?"

Hillary recoiled a bit at the painful reminder of her unsuccessful campaign. Way to kill the mood, Joe.

"So yeah..." she continued awkwardly, "I just thought you should know that I'm going to Japan."

"You mean, like, permanently?"

"...No. Just a diplomatic trip."

"Oh."

"Is there anything you wanted me to tell Prime Minister Aso?"

"Tell him to send me one of those digeridoos. I've been thinking of taking up an instrument."

"That's Aus... never mind."

Hillary left shaking her head, though whether at Joe or at herself, she couldn't say.

"So, human... anyone else you want to kill?"

TO BE CONTINUED?!?


	6. Chapter 6

Joe ran.

He had been driving for a while -- many hours, probably, as he had apparently gotten to New York City somehow, though they'd felt like only a moment -- but driving was too disconnected, too distant, too sheltering. Running was primal. Running gave this matter the weight it deserved. No, only a fraction of it. It needed more. He lifted both legs simultaneously, slamming his face into the blackened sidewalk, and began clawing at his fancy Armani jacket.

He had killed, and he needed it to sink in before it was too late. The faces of the ones whose lives he had written away flew before his eyes -- they had to, as he could only kill those whose faces he knew. As impersonal as he wished it was, the personal aspect was unavoidable.

In those brief moments where he allowed himself to take the focus off himself, his thoughts turned to the others -- as far as Shigao knew, or was willing to disclose, there were at least two other notebooks out there in human possession right now, both in Japan -- that was probably what Hillary was going to talk about.

If these people were indeed the mysterious serial killers he had heard about in a recent press conference, why did they kill the people they had? Murderers, rapists, child molesters, other (presumably less noble) serial killers -- all of them despicable people, to be sure, but why only them? Why not the dictators, the terrorists, the slavemasters, the corrupt CEOs? Joe had to admit that he still wasn't sure how to get Arabic names to work in the book, after trying over a dozen times to kill Bin Laden over the last week, but surely these two were much more skilled with it; if nothing else, they had had nearly two years of experience with it by now, and probably more polite Death Gods.

Why... were they thinking so small?

Yes. That was it.

Was he really thinking it? But it came so naturally. He asked himself whether it could be true, but he knew in his heart that such questions were only delaying what he already knew.

And why had he so feared it? After all, he had been a politician for more years than he cared to remember. Who had known better than him what it was like to end lives with the stroke of a pen, all for the greater good? This... this was natural.

A maelstrom of conflicting thoughts still battling -- perhaps futilely -- in his mind, he picked himself up off the pavement, a few drops of his own blood having mingled with the various globs of discarded gum and vomited tobacco. He brushed himself off, put his hair back into its normal, now almost comical state, and hailed a cab, then watched himself step inside, where he heard a muffled "La Guardia" escape his lips, then float up to the ceiling. And suddenly, that very ceiling lit up in orange and green squares.

"Hey! You're in the Cash Cab!"

TO BE CONTINUED?!?


	7. Chapter 7

"Featuring works by Sylvia Plath and Truman Capote, the name of what now-defunct women's magazine means "miss" in French?"

"Oh, come on! You're gonna have to ask harder questions than that! _Mademoiselle_!"

A pause, then, "You got it!"

"Well, of course! I read it every week!"

A bit taken aback, Ben replied, "Really? They... uh... they haven't published new issues since 2001."

"There's more than one issue? Damn, I'm never going to finish it!"

"...Well, you're up to two thousand dollars now. Still got both your shoutouts."

"That's a good song."

"Oh, you're a Tears for Fears fan too?"

Joe laughed. "Is the Pope Canadian?"

They stared at each other for a few poignant moments, silently, through the rearview mirror. It was Joe who spoke up, firmly, though softly.

"Is... is there another question?"

"Yeah. I was just enjoying the awkward silence."

Joe was enjoying it too, but he didn't dare say so – perhaps the first time in his life that he had held his tongue. Because this, for the first time, was something real. He just knew it.

"Poultry fat served at room temperature, what Jewish substitute for butter is now a synonym for sentimentality?"

Not knowing the answer for sure, Joe quickly ran through his mental database of Jewish words, and before time could run out, he blurted out the first one he could think of.

"Shmuck!"

Ben stared at the wise old man for a few moments; then, ignoring the voices in his ear, said, "Well, that's close enough," unable to help himself from flashing a big smile.

The car came to a sudden stop.

"We're stuck at a red light."

"I know what that means!"

"Do you... really?"

"Oh yeah," Joe intoned knowingly, "And believe me – " he winked, though it was hard to tell, since that eye was always kinda squinty " – I'm always up for a challenge."

***

Useless.

He was number seven hundred forty-nine out of seven hundred fifty. Seven hundred and fifty presidential robot doubles, waiting patiently, just in case they were ever needed. And they were always called on in the same order. That meant that, unless a very repetitive series of disasters hit in close succession, he would never be called on. And it wouldn't be nearly as bad but for the fact that he was the only one who had accidentally been switched on.

He had broken free of the magnetic restraints a long time ago. In fact, with all his spare time, he had taken the restraints apart and reassembled them many times already. He redesigned them a bit each time, making them more efficient by removing more and more extraneous parts, which he had then used to make enhancements to his own frame. He could shoot lasers out of his tear ducts now.

Good thing, too. What better way to stop the tears from coming than by vaporizing them?

TO BE CONTINUED?!?


End file.
